Lake update 6/12/2012

Smudge

I went to the lake Saturday and I didn't bring my camera.  I saw that Junior's nest has hatched and Junior and his family has completely disappeared.  Today, I saw only one of the juveniles from Killer's territory over there.  Later, I could hear Junior screaming as if he was defending his chicks, but I looked all over and couldn't find the family.

Meanwhile, Smudge and her sister are still in the ballfields.  They seem totally relaxed.  Their dad, Pollux, has been trying hard to get them to fly around with him, but they just ignore him.  Smudge's sister wasn't being very co-operative with me photographing her.

Smudge

The two oldest ducklings at the lake still don't have their wing feathers:

This is pretty odd for ducklings over two months old.

I couldn't find Neo today to compare, but when I last saw him, he was beginning to grow out his primaries and he's at least two weeks behind these girls in age.  I sure hope that they grow soon as the two red-tailed hawks are almost ready to fledge:

The mom of five ducklings have moved to a new area and are feeding on a big algae bloom.  Mom was a little upset about the cormorant activity there:

I saw this mom with three ducklings on Saturday and all three are still alive today.  I think this is Neo's older sister from last year that looks exactly like her mom.  She was stolen and raised away from her mom by another female:

The were eating algae, too:

I saw three baby coots in the area where I saw two last year in which one got eaten by one of the herons.  One of the babies was afraid of me and went and hid.  All three babies appeared to have hatched at about the same time:

This juvenile black-crowned night heron was watching them.  They were moving closer and closer to him, seemingly not to notice.  He sure looked like he was excited about having a baby coot for lunch today:

But, luckily, mom and dad coot saw him and gave him a good wallop.  All three chicks were saved.

The baby great blue herons were in their nest, if you can see them in this photo:

They were very concerned about this great egret nearby in a tree.  I have no idea where their parents are hunting nowadays.

Pepper is looking beautiful, but still has a broken wing (on the other side), though it looks partially healed.

Spoonface (Bossy) and his ring are still around.  At least things haven't gotten worse for him.  He is one year old now.

Near Spoonface was a family of coots, also:

Quacker, the flying cayuga seems to have been missing for at least three to four weeks now.  People are concerned about her.  Quacker flies exceptionally well, about as good as the wild mallards.  Her boyfriend was possibly seen, once, in the area, but not lately.  It is possible that Quacker has moved on to another location, or, perhaps, she went to sit on a nest somewhere, especially since her boyfriend has also not been seen.  She has been at the lake for over two years now.